• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.17
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• pp.145-178
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• 2001

Bourdieu is one of the few social science researchers who were interested in photography. Bourdieu's work on photography appears principally in two books: Un art moyen: Essai sur les usagrs sociaux de la photographie(1965) and La distinction(1979). In these books, Bourdieu analyzes the role of photography in the family life of peasants and small town and urban dwellers. He shows how different classes and groups express their esthetic worldview in response to different photographs and photographic styles. What Bourdieu analyzed is not just photography but ways of photographing and ways of looking at pictures. Through these analyses, Bourdieu explores the social definition of photography. Bourdieu's ideas on photographic practice in social life are as follows. First, the photography, especially family photography generally practiced, has the integrative function. It recreates the group by ritualizing and solemnizing the important moments of social life in which the group reaffirms its unity. Second, the photography as esthetic practice in search of legitimacy as a fine art becomes a means by which different classes are pitted against each other. Each of classes gives its own meaning to photographic practice. Despite its originality and persuasive power, Bourdieu's work on photography has its own limits. The data used by Bourdieu are 35 years old and relevant to European social life. Things has changed since. First, the technological improvement and innovation in photography was considerable. Cheap and good photographic materials, easy to operate, made photographic practice everybody's everyday activity. New media like camcorder and digital camera made photography one of the industrial discards like jukebox. It means that photography does not function as important means of distinction between classes any longer. The integrative function of the photography becomes more ambiguous too. Second, the esthetic status of the photography has changed. The family photography was already integraed into fine art. Photography is not a middle-brow art any more. Bourdieu's work on photography shows how photography was used by different social classes in European social life of the 1960's. His work is historically and geographically limited. Moreover, his work was ordered by the french affiliate of Eastman Kodak Company. And all along the analysis, Bourdieu didn't hide his intention of distinguishing his sociological method from the other methods, especially psychological one. These mean that Bourdieu's work was done in a specific context, for specific purposes. In this respect, Bourdieu's work on photography, like every sociological work, can not claim to be universal.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.135-179
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• 2018

How do robots interact with the elderly? In this paper, we analyze the contexts of interaction between robots and the elderly and the role of mediators in initiating, facilitating, and maintaining the interaction. We do not attempt to evaluate the robot's performance or measure the impact of robots on the elderly. Instead, we focus on the circumstances and contexts within which a robot is situated as it interacts with the elderly. Our premise is that the success of human-robot interaction does not depend solely on the robot's technical capability, but also on the pre-arranged settings and local contingencies at the site of interaction. We select three television shows that feature robots for the elderly and one "dementia-prevention" robot in a regional healthcare center as our sites for observing robot-elderly interaction: "Grandma's Robot"(tvN), "Co-existence Experiment''(JTBC), "Future Diary"(MBC), and the Silbot class in Suwon. By analyzing verbal and non-verbal interactions between the elderly and the robots in these programs, we point out that in most cases the robots and the elderly do not meet one-to-one; the interaction is usually mediated by an actor who is not an old person. These mediators are not temporary or secondary components in the robot-elderly interaction; they play a key role in the relationship by arranging the first meeting, triggering initial interactions, and carefully observing unfolding interactions. At critical moments, the mediators prevent the interaction from falling apart by intervening verbally or physically. Based on our observation of the robot-elderly interaction, we argue that we can better understand and evaluate the human-robot interaction in general by paying attention to the existence and role of the mediators. We suggest that researchers in human-robot interaction should expand their analytical focus from one-to-one interactions between humans and robots to human-robot-human interactions in diverse real-world situations.